


Bad Dreams

by Cornerofmadness



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-19
Updated: 2015-01-19
Packaged: 2018-03-08 04:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3195665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cornerofmadness/pseuds/Cornerofmadness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hohenheim is plagued with nightmares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer-- Arakawa owns it
> 
> Author’s Note -- Happy holidays, 2014. Written for the community.

XXX  
Hohenheim awoke with a start. It was rare he slept all night, his altered body requiring little sleep. He stole out of bed so he wouldn’t wake Trisha up. She needed her sleep. He had just started staying over, wondering if that would cause talk. In a town as small as Resembool, of course it would give the gossips all the fuel they could use.

Maybe this was a mistake. A monster like him didn’t deserve to be happy. Of course, he didn’t really see himself as a monster, though he knew others would. Hohenheim moved on every decade or so. Settling here would be a mistake. Surely Pinako had already noticed he hadn’t aged at all.

But as far as he ran, Hohenheim couldn’t escape his mind. When he slept, he heard the whispers and screams of Xerxes, still bound into him. The individual voices had died out for the most part centuries ago. He barely noticed any more - maybe that was the definition of being a monster, not hearing the hundreds of souls that had been stitched into his own, being a living Philosopher’s Stone.

Tonight’s nightmare hadn’t been of that day when his body had been torn asunder and remade as a ‘gift’ from the Homunculus. No, it was an older nightmare from when he was just a boy. Slave Twenty-Three never had any options, subjected to every whim of his master. Hohenheim remembered those days as if they were yesterday and not centuries ago.

He could smell sweat on him as he turned on a light in his library and settled in for a read. The tang of fear was still in his mouth. His skin shivered as if his master was still touching him. Hohenheim shut his eyes against the ancient memory of being forcibly held down and bled.

He had thought he would die that night. Maybe it would have been better if he had. Not that it would have changed things in the end. Surely the Homunculus would had gotten what it wanted without him. Hohenheim would never know the answer to that. 

Dreams of bleeding into the flask, like a pig being bled for a feast. His master had no expression on his face and why should he? Slave Twenty-Three was every bit as replaceable as that pig would have been. Hohenheim counted himself lucky then that his master had bothered to bind up his bleeding arm and given a day to recover his strength before being made to return to his duties. Why had that horrible dream returned?

Hohenheim jumped at a touch on his shoulder. His head snapped up and he peered through his long, loose hair at Trisha. 

She smiled, looking still half-asleep. “Are you okay?”

He nodded. “You can go back to sleep. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s all right.” Trisha nudged his book aside. “You had another bad dream. I can tell.”

“It’s nothing.”

She slid into his lap, putting her arms around him. Trisha rested her head against this shoulder. “I keep telling you, I’ll hold you until the nightmares end.”

He embraced her tightly. “I like the sound of that.”

Hohenheim knew it wouldn’t work. There had been others who had promised that but failed. Trisha never needed to know that. She loved him unconditionally and he loved her back. It had been so long since he felt that for anyone. He would let her hold him. Maybe this time the nightmares would stop.


End file.
